The effect of color coding for the characters on computer keyboards for multilingual input using modeless methods

Abstract

When using computer keyboard in a multilingual environment, due to different languages and input methods, it requires switching back and forth between input modes. Although computer keyboard design has been discussed in numerous literatures, however, the colors of characters printed on the keys used for multiple input method has not been investigated. Along with the introduction of the intelligent "modeless" input method, the color-coding of the characters used on keyboard and how it impacts the performance need to be evaluated. A series of three experiments using Chinese and English as input text were conducted and the results show that keyboards with color-coding improved the performances, especially when typing text mixed with English and Chinese. The use of modeless input method also outperformed the traditional approach. And the color-coding particularly improved the performance of modeless input method for mixed input text. The results are discussed with motor program theory. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.